Reviewed by Bernard Zuel

MOST artists do sad songs and you can throw a dart in the air at any festival and hit a dozen bands doing angry songs and bitter songs. Occasionally you'll find a clever writer doing wry and, of course, no twentysomething act is complete without premature ennui. It is the currency of the realm, after all.

Aimee Mann has stood out for a long time for consistently delineating a space between but never entirely of those categories. And then, within that space, writing songs that can hurt you in places you didn't know had sensitivities left any more. Take, for example, Living a Lie on this, her eighth solo album. In this song, an alluring duet with James Mercer of the Shins, Mann describes someone you might know very well if you've gone past your 30s and have acquaintances who haven't reconciled themselves to the same. "No one bears a grudge like a boy genius just past his prime/Gilding his cage one bar at a time," she sings, adding with typical sharpness that "I'm living a lie, you're living it too … a lie I can't tell, so we wait for a crack in the shell."

Aimee Mann.

This far into her career, with the title track of the album pricking the balloon of a familiar character, the glib smoothie who makes the world work for him, Mann hasn't changed. Except she has. Since the 1999 soundtrack to Magnolia brought her belated recognition, Mann and her built-for-comfort-not-for-speed contralto have nailed their colours to the mast of quiet, if not solemn songs. In a way it was a style sealed by the absence of electric guitars from her last album, 2008's @#%&! Smilers.

Advertisement

However, Charmer offers up a sustained appeal to your pop heart and brain in a way Mann's work hasn't done since her very first solo albums. We're not talking bouncing exactly (there are some beautiful sad-eyed songs here, such as Slip And Roll) but Mann keeps giving us tunes and arrangements that have zest and hooks (Gamma Ray is out and out power pop) and hark to the more upbeat side of her usual muses - Paul McCartney, Elton John, Christine McVie. That duet with Mercer, for example, could have escaped from Rumours, so comfortably does it blend a relaxed ambience with an inner sting. On Crazytown (about a woman who hasn't left the party, though she should) there's an old-fashioned synth and a Chrissie Hynde tone to a song that takes to the highway. And in the pointed character assessment of Gumby, guitars jangle, backing vocals swell and the melody sinks in even deeper.

Charmer is a gem from a woman not short of them. Searching online for the album, which hasn't an Australian release, is well worth the effort if pop music still has you in its thrall.